Our world with no borders to pandemics requires that scientists work together forming bonds of collegiality and build bridges of mutual public health benefit, not walls of separation. The world is different now. It is misguided to think that the “hoarding” of data/information/messages/specimens is the right way to act because of paternalistic, economic, or political reasons. A better way forward is to focus global efforts to reverse the current presumption of controlled access in favor of open public health policies and practices that unambiguously support open access to public health surveillance (PHS) information. Moving to open public health (i.e., the open sharing of PHS data and confidentiality protected, indicator- based data, pathogen isolates, clinical specimens) is an important step toward modernizing PHS. We have both the responsibility and opportunity to modernize U.S. PHS after recent glaring failures. Evolved over the past 70 years as a siIoed, health outcome-specific component of public health practice, U.S. PHS is neither efficient nor effective. A new, proven, more-advanced PHS approach and model was recently presented to a Federal Policy Work Group advising Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions called Integrated Public Health Surveillance (IDSR). Conceived and piloted in 1998 in Tanzania, IDSR has been successfully implemented in all of Africa under the authority of WHO/Afro; plus Pakistan and India. Now is time to modernize U.S. PHS!